S148. What Are We Projecting?: American Poetry and Poetics in the Era of the Project

Room 606, Washington State Convention Center, Level 6
Saturday, March 1, 2014
10:30 am to 11:45 am

 

Whatever happened to books of poems in which each poem was separate and distinct? Increasingly, American poets with a range of aesthetic sensibilities have begun to describe their writing in terms of the “project.” This panel will investigate the predominance of the “project” poem and examine the social demands to frame poetics as project. By exploring limitations and advantages of projects and critiquing their own “projects,” panelists will propose alternatives to project-modeled inquiry.


Participants

Moderator:

Sasha Steensen is the author of A Magic Book, The Method, and House of Deer. Recent work has appeared in Boston Review, Black Warrior Review, Denver Quarterly, Free Verse, and La Petit Zine. She edits Bonfire Press and serves as a poetry editor for Colorado Review.

Catherine Wagner has published four books of poetry and various chapbooks. Her latest book is Nervous Device. She is part of the S(W)OP poetry and performance collective in southwest Ohio and professor of English in the MA program in creative writing at Miami University, Ohio.

Rodrigo Toscano is the author of six books of poetry, including Deck of Deeds, and Collapsible Poetics Theater (a 2007 National Poetry Series Selection). His writing has appeared in the anthologies, Against Expression, Diasporic Avant Gardes, and Best American Poetry.

Ronaldo V. Wilson is the author of Narrative of the Life of the Brown Boy and the White Man and Poems of the Black Object. His latest book Farther Traveler: Poetry, Prose, Other is forthcoming. He is an assistant professor of Literature and Creative Writing at U.C. Santa Cruz.

Bhanu Kapil lives in Colorado where she teaches at Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. She has written four full-length works including The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers, Incubation: a space for monsters, Humanimal, and Schizophrene.

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